Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Okay, show of hands... who watched the whole sucker?Whatta marathon, right?On the one hand, kind of amazing that
last night’s three-handed portion of the 2012 World Series of Poker lasted as
long as it did (264 hands!), but then again, given the super deep stacks -- and
the stakes -- it probably should have taken a long time.

Greg Merson is obviously a deserving winner, and both Jesse
Sylvia and Jake Balsiger proved themselves last night, too.

Speaking of a show of hands (pun intended), I was making
some references in yesterday’s post that revealed I’d been keeping track of the
hole cards being shown on ESPN’s “almost live” broadcast of the final
table.I had the idea last year to
do something similar, but didn’t follow through on it.This time, though, I remained stubborn
and went ahead and tracked the hands all of the way to the very end, and thus
for today’s post I am sharing what I’ve done here.

I was surprised last year, actually, not to have seen anyone
having done this sort of thing. (Someone might have somewhere, but I never came across
it.)But my sense is there are
some who would be interested in having this resource, including anyone wanting to
perform thorough analyses of the play at this year’s final table as well as
those just wanting to check on a particular hand.

A few disclaimers...

I am following the hand numbering used in PokerNews’ live
reporting from the final table.Some of you might have noticed ESPN’s numbering was off (by one),
something that I believe resulted from a misdeal early on that ESPN counted and
then couldn’t go back and change.They didn’t really make a lot of reference to hand #s on Day 1 on ESPN,
although last night they’d sometimes list it in the upper left corner.Know, then, for most of Day 1 and all
of Day 2, ESPN’s references to hand #s are one more than they should be.

The winner of each hand is listed first. You’ll notice a few hands with “X X”
listed as hole cards.Those were
hands ESPN either skipped over showing or which for whatever reason they
never were able to reveal hole cards.Sylvia in particular didn’t show his hole cards whenever he got a walk,
and indeed most of those hands without hole cards are from walks or rapid
raise-and-take hands.

Still, just about all of the hands did make it to air, and only a few
hole cards were missed along the way.Note that ESPN’s practice was in non-showdown hands to show the winner’s
cards and the cards of the last player to fold, meaning for almost every hand
there were two players’ cards of concern.(Only once, in Hand #306, did three players make it to a showdown.)

Donnie and Rich did a terrific job with the live blog at PN,
and Mickey kept the counts in order the whole way as well.I used their reporting for more than
just hand numbers, but also to double-check a lot of what I’m listing below.I should note there is one hand (#363)
where I believe they might’ve gotten the winner wrong, but it was a small
one.And heck, we’re talking
10-plus hours into fairly intense coverage of three-handed poker by then.

Finally, it goes without saying any errors in this list
are all mine.And indeed, I’m sure
there are a few here and there.I’m
reasonably confident the Day 1 hands are all accurate, as I had time to
double-check those while also getting to look at B.J. Nemeth’s log of Monday’s
hands, too, for further proofing.I didn’t get to do that sort of rereading for Day 2, and so feel like
there might be a few hands where I would’ve liked to have made sure about suits or
other details.(Anyone noticing
anything obviously incorrect, feel free to let me know.)